Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

communication

  • confidentiality (countable and uncountable, plural confidentialities) 1. (uncountable) The property of being confidential. 2. (countable) Something told in confidence; a secret. As a priest, I get confidentiality. I respect not only those things told to me in confidence, but the person doing the telling. I understand the issues and the fear and how unconfident a person…

  • Jesus’s parables are dependent on seeing and understanding Proper 12A  |  Matthew 13:31-33,44-52 The Hiding At the beginning of this chapter, we’re told Jesus is so swarmed by people that He jumps into a boat to teach the crowds surrounding Him on the shore. There so many people He has to put a barrier up; to…

  • a Homily for Proper 9 A Text: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30   Dance, Puppet! “It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another” This is how Jesus speaks to “the current generation,” His generation. Returning from seeing John the Baptist who summoned Him, to question Him. John, asking Jesus of Nazareth: Are you…

  • I have this feeling that we all live with a paradox about Jesus. On the one hand, we feel confident, every one of us, that we could actually answer that question What Would Jesus Do? And, at the same time, when pressed on what Jesus’s most important message is, we shuffle our feet, look at…

  • Why the word you want is proclaim, not communicate a Homily for Proper 8 A Text: Matthew 10:40-42 Getting into it I struggled with this text a lot. Way more than any text in months. You wouldn’t guess that three little verses would be so hard. And you certainly wouldn’t expect a lectionary text about welcoming…

  • a Homily for The Day of  Pentecost Text: Acts 2:1-21   Into the Unknown There are those moments when we read scripture that, if you’re anything like me, you are saying “Yeah…I’m not sure I would’ve done that.” Last week, we read about how Jesus left the disciples, disappearing behind a cloud. The disciples went back…